I've been at Occupy Philly for the past couple weeks, off and on. It's like Occupy Wall-street but with Flyers fans. There's about 300 tents out there right now, which is triple what we started with. It's cool to visit and help out, but at the same time you can see the lack of organization and political infighting. There's call and response chant being used during the marches "Show me what democracy looks like / This is what democracy looks like" ... so, here's what it looks like in Philly...
Guess which guy is nicknamed "Rainbow Jesus." Anyway, this is a General Assembly where everyone votes on issues. The facilitators (the guy with the mic and the people around him), organize the votes. Here's the problem, most of the facilitators are from an Anarchist bookstore on South Street called The Wooden Shoe. The whole thing is being slowly pushed towards anarchism by what amounts to a ruling elite. I've usually considered myself an anarchist, but... a protest doesn't seem to be the time to come up with a new governing system... kinda jumping the gun a bit. Plus, manipulating democracy is kinda lame. They've actually been voting to dismiss people working at the Occupation because of random accusations (working with the city, managing the website "unacceptably" and so on). Interestingly enough, we just stopped listening to them. Volunteers can't really tell other volunteers to leave. It's not like the General Assembly really has authority over who shows up. Whatever.
Here's my girlfriend, Ariana, looking at the clouds while the Lorax (previously seen trying to cook a sea turtle) chills in her bag. He's a troublesome Lorax. He tried to escape several times to start a drum-circle with Rainbow Jesus. We caught him though, he's not very mobile.
These girls, a band called Wilby, set up and started playing. They were better than some of the people who were using our PA system (they actually brought their own). Check out their facebook, maybe. It's not really my kind of music, but you have to give them credit for getting out there.
On to other shit... my friend, Lauren, has been putting her photography on Etsy to sell (link here). She's good (I bought a print) but her entire customer base is her friends on Facebook, and since she had deleted it and started over again, she's only got 60 friends or so. I'm glad she's found something to do. I hope she keeps it up.
Later
Guess which guy is nicknamed "Rainbow Jesus." Anyway, this is a General Assembly where everyone votes on issues. The facilitators (the guy with the mic and the people around him), organize the votes. Here's the problem, most of the facilitators are from an Anarchist bookstore on South Street called The Wooden Shoe. The whole thing is being slowly pushed towards anarchism by what amounts to a ruling elite. I've usually considered myself an anarchist, but... a protest doesn't seem to be the time to come up with a new governing system... kinda jumping the gun a bit. Plus, manipulating democracy is kinda lame. They've actually been voting to dismiss people working at the Occupation because of random accusations (working with the city, managing the website "unacceptably" and so on). Interestingly enough, we just stopped listening to them. Volunteers can't really tell other volunteers to leave. It's not like the General Assembly really has authority over who shows up. Whatever.
Here's my girlfriend, Ariana, looking at the clouds while the Lorax (previously seen trying to cook a sea turtle) chills in her bag. He's a troublesome Lorax. He tried to escape several times to start a drum-circle with Rainbow Jesus. We caught him though, he's not very mobile.These girls, a band called Wilby, set up and started playing. They were better than some of the people who were using our PA system (they actually brought their own). Check out their facebook, maybe. It's not really my kind of music, but you have to give them credit for getting out there.
On to other shit... my friend, Lauren, has been putting her photography on Etsy to sell (link here). She's good (I bought a print) but her entire customer base is her friends on Facebook, and since she had deleted it and started over again, she's only got 60 friends or so. I'm glad she's found something to do. I hope she keeps it up.
Later